ECONOMIC INDEX DRAWS PICTURE OF THE FUTURE

Billions of dollars in trade deficits. Millions of construction permits issued. Sometimes it seems as if the government, in its attempt to quantify the nation's economy through statistics, has made it impossible to understand the quality of what's going on in human terms.

In contrast, try these numbers for human scale: In the first quarter of this year, there were 300 fewer people working in Broward County's hotels and motels than there were a year earlier.

That's one of the statistics included in Sun Bank of South Florida's Index of Economic Activity, a quarterly snapshot of the local economy. The index shows economic activity in Broward County up 4.2 percent from the same quarter a year earlier -- a big slowdown from the 9.3 percent growth the area showed in 1984.

Economists interpreting all those national statistics have pointed out that the country's overall economy slowed down in the first quarter compared with last year's prosperity, and that the trend isn't likely to reverse anytime soon. Last week, for instance, the sensitive index of leading economic indicators -- a compilation of a variety of statistics that tend to forecast the economy's future -- dropped.

"I think we're seeing, in those industries that are nationally sensitive, that we're following the national trend," said John Gabel, a consulting economist to Sun Bank.

The bank didn't collect comparable statistics for Palm Beach County, but Gabel said, "Things are a bit better in Palm Beach than in Broward, largely in the employment area. The growth is significantly greater in employment than in Broward."

The numbers contained in the five-page report released today by Sun Banks give a glimpse at Broward's economy that reflects the national trends during the first three months of the year while raising questions about the direction in which the South Florida region is heading.

They show growth slowing in a county that's historically relied on growth for its economic health; they show employment dropping in sectors such as manufacturing and building that aren't sensitive to seasonal change; and they show employment growth slowing down in the seasonal sectors, such as restaurants, despite some of the best tourism months in history. But they also show an area with quickly increasing retail sales and very low -- 4 percent -- unemployment.

In Broward, the bank's statistics show that the much heralded high-tech industries are as sensitive to market trends on the Silicon Beach as they are in the Silicon Valley, with 300 jobs lost since December in electronics and electrical equipment manufacturing.

They also show that the long-predicted diversification of the area's economy -- away from the mainstays of tourism, construction and retirees toward light industry -- has not yet come to pass. Since the 1950s, Gabel said, manufacturing has provided between 10 and 12 percent of the area's jobs. In the first quarter, that figure stood at 10.4 percent.

He sees a continued long-term pattern of growth in the county, that's significantly slower than the hyper-growth of the 1970s, growth that simultaneously brought prosperity and traffic jams. "People coming to Florida today will probably choose someplace else unless they are looking for a decent job," he said.

He sees growth moving to Palm Beach County, but also sees the county to the north learning from Broward's experience (and the same, earlier, experiences of Dade County as it grew from sleepy resort to urban area.)

"Palm Beach is the Broward of the '70s," he said. "As a result, some of the same phenomenon that happened in Broward in the '70s are happening there. But it's more orderly. So much of the growth in Broward County took place before it had a land use plan. But Palm Beach had a land use plan before Broward. There's some semblance of orderliness there that did not exist in Broward."